Can One - Or More - State(s) Actually Secede From the United States of America?

   Once again, people who live in the United States of America are declaring that their specific state should secede from the Union because they disagree with the politicians who are running the country from the two houses of Congress in Washington, D. C.   This really is madness.

   There are two major political parties here in the USA - the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.  The next largest registered Party is the Independents; and there are hundreds of smaller political parties that are scattered across the country, including our territories.  In the recent past, Republicans first wanted to secede from the Union when Barack Obama was President; now it's because Joe Biden is President - and it looks like Joe Biden might get elected to a second term, ten months from now.  That frightens the hell out of the majority of the supporters of the former President.

    On 11 December 2012, Juris Magazine posted a blog entitled "Can a State Legally Secede from the United States?"  Here is a part of their response:

"At the culmination of the Civil War, the United States Supreme Court decided Texas v. White, which started as a dispute over bonds issued in Texas during the war. Texas attempted to leave the United States when it supported the Confederacy, where it supplied troops to fight with the rebel forces. The United States Supreme Court established a new constitutional principle in Texas v. White, holding that states cannot unilaterally secede.

Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase stated: “When Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the state. The Act, which consummated her admission into the Union, was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final.”

If it doesn’t seem hard enough to secede, some constitutional scholars say that secession could be considered treason under the Articles of the Constitution. In an article for the Kansas City Star, Akhil Reed Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, discussed the Supremacy Clause in Article 6 of the United States Constitution.

“What the Constitution says repeatedly is once you’re in (as a state), you’re in.  If people want to secede, they are allowed to leave; they just can’t take the land and the water with them. There is a lawful way to secede – it’s called emigration. They can move to Canada,” Amar wrote."'

To view the blog posting in full, visit  https://sites.law.duq.edu/juris/2012/12/11/can-a-state-legally-secede-from-the-united-states/      

    A  FindLaw blog, written by Richard Dahl, and last updated on 30 October 2020, titled "Could States Really Secede from the Union?" has a response at the end of it, that:

"The late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, “If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede."

Actually, there is.

What Scalia probably meant to say was that there is no unilateral right to secede. One state can't just say, “The heck with you, U.S.A. We're out of here."

What a state (or states) can do, however, is begin the process of seeking a mutually agreed upon parting of the ways, and that process clearly exists, set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1868 ruling in Texas v. White. That ruling concluded that a state (or states) could secede by gaining approval of both houses of Congress and then obtaining ratification by three fourths of the nation's legislatures. In other words, it's a tough task.

Texas v. White did, however, suggest another way a state might secede: “through revolution." That might be obvious, but it's a point that French, the author, focuses on when he talks about how a California exit could come about, as he did in the New York Times “The Argument" podcast on Oct. 30. It could happen, he suggests, if civil unrest becomes extreme, and the state and the nation simply agree to part ways to minimize the damage.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves."

To view the FindLaw blog in full, visit  https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/could-states-really-secede-from-the-union/

   But I wonder if the people (and especially the governments) of the states who want to secede have reckoned with what would happen if they were no longer a part of the United States of America.  The current citizens would no longer receive any US Government benefits.  No Social Security payments, no insurance, no legal money, no banks, no telephone, no internet, no mail service; no government monies coming in to support roads and bridges, no VA programs, no school funding, no access to other states in the US without a passport and current US legal tender, no FAA or NTSB.  Each previous state that secedes will have to set up their own tax agencies, licensing agencies, trade agencies for crossing state borders, telephone and mail and internet and television and banking services, hospitals and doctors and teachers will need licensing and approvals, gasoline prices would probably be prohibitive, as would electricity and water services.  Each previous state would have to mint and print their own money.  Each previous state would have to hire and employ their own Army and Air Force; and, if they adjoin a large body of water, will have to set up their own Coast Guard and Navy services, also.  All services and tax funding from the United States of America would be cut off and shut down.  As citizens of a place other than the USA, they would need passports to travel, and have their vehicles and luggage - and selves - searched at each state line of the USA. To be able to secede and stay free of the USA, each previous state will need to purchase products that it cannot produce within its' borders - food, drink, vehicles, technology, clothing, etc., etc., etc. - Would the United States extend huge lines of credit to these new places that have wrested themselves from the Union?  I don't think so.

    And what would happen to all of the US Army, US Navy, US Marine and US Air Force bases in those states that decided to leave the USA?  The United States of America owns the land that the US military bases stand upon.  Will the new "independent states" have to ignore the presence of the USA military bases within their lines?  Will the USA demand payment in return for the land - once they've removed all infrastructure from each base?  How will those new "independent states" pay for the land?  What would happen there?

   I spent my school years in Florida.  We moved there when my father retired from the US Navy after 22 years of service.  I started Kindergarten there and got my first college degree there.  I spent most of my summers in Virginia with relatives, thanks to my parents and my maternal relatives.  I will not visit Florida this year for my 50th High School Reunion, because I cannot and will not visit a place where Ron DeSantis rules.  I will not visit relatives and friends in Texas because I will not step foot in a state where Greg Abbott rules.  Neither of those two afore-named people govern; they rule.  And I will NOT visit any state where the powers of government are allowed to be so completely distorted by hatred and greed.

   Secession???   I don't think it will happen.  But a hell of a lot of dissension will.